Old Württemberg

These included the former County of Württemberg in the heartland on the Middle Neckar and the additional territories it had gained: the counties of Calw, Mömpelgard, Tübingen, Urach and Vaihingen, the baronies of Heidenheim and Teck, the inherited Reichslehen or imperial fief of Grüningen, and numerous smaller lordships as well as the many ecclesial territories, that Dukes Ulrich and Christoph had seized and secularised in the wake of the Reformation.

Independent "islands" on Württemberg soil were the imperial towns of Heilbronn, Esslingen, Weil der Stadt, Reutlingen, and the expansive Ulm on the southeastern edge as well as several secular lordships whose locations are marked by Georg Gadner on his overview map of 1596 as red dots.

Following the Poor Conrad uprising, the 1514 Treaty of Tübingen came into force, which was intended to influence the constitution of Württemberg for centuries.

For example, until 1805 the Duchy had a parliamentary assembly dominated by patricians and prelates that restricted the rights and fiscal policies of the duke,[1] however since the Reformation there had been no political forum (such as the Landstände) of organised nobility, because the former estate-owning aristocracy had largely remained Roman Catholic, had placed themselves directly under the Holy Roman Emperor as imperial knights and no longer saw themselves owing fealty to the Duke of Württemberg.

[3] The political differentiation between Old and New Württemberg now became obsolete, but was occasionally still used to make a regional distinction.